Trees are a luxury, growing something like that takes time. I hope they really have a good reason for doing what they did.
And a public good. They keep things cooler when it’s really hot out, keep things warmer when it’s really cool out, mildly improve air quality, reduces noise pollution, provide measurable mental health benefits, and so on.
Around here removing big trees is illegal, on your property or not. I’m a fan.
Open soil instead of pavement also helps reduce flooding during heavy rainfall since the ground absorbs water instead of just making it run off to somewhere else.
At risk of doxxing yourself, can you expand on where you live? Just curious of the most general area. I love that law!
Toronto, and the law I’m referring to is a city bylaw.
Looks like it ruined the whole area by the looks of it.
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Right? I feel like this warrants criminal charges
why? people have the right to do what they want with their property.
if you don’t believe that, they join a HOA and setup their bullshit regulations that require your lawn to be perfect and green or you get fined hundreds of dollars.
Sure they didn’t turn it into a shop? Those definitely look like they were made into display windows
In Australia it would be a 15-storey block of incredibly substandard flats lol
That millennials still cannot afford
Why don’t they like trees?
Capitalism has drained their soul. They don’t think artistically. They don’t think about nature. They don’t see beauty. Their art is corporate art.
I would have left the trees alone, but removed the grass and covered it with small black and grey stones. That way the trees would still look nice, and the rain water can still pass through the rocks and prevent flooding, unlike this mess. This looks like a business now, it’s not a home anymore.
pass through the rocks and prevent flooding
Yah, that doesn’t work that way. Water needs to get pulled into plants or water channels created by dead plant root systems, or it just runs off. This is why deserts have flash floods.
People are focusing on the house in the middle, but if you look at he whole picture, it isn’t that one house. It’s every single house on both streets. It’s not just this specific owner. If this were the US, I’d suspect a HOA at work.
It’s like they heard lawns were bad for the environment, but stopped listening at the part about replacing it with native plants.
Just before the previous owners of my house decided to put the house on the market they painted all wood inside (stairs, doors, door frames, window frames, skirting) pitch black.
Yes thanks, I enjoy living in a cave. Removing, sanding and painting all that will take me 100s of hours.
Oh, and it was done with the cheapest paint possible while painting over all hinges, locks and sometimes windows.
Aah yes, the landlord special.
A few years back I would have asked why you bought it. But in this market I get it.
They’re covering the blood spatters. And needed to do it fast and cheap.
I personally don’t like it, but I respect their right to do whatever the fuck they want with their property. If they want a fugly house, then that’s their right.
Honestly, no. At least where I live, they’re finally starting to do something against gravel gardens. They are illegal here (have been for decades but no-one did anything against it) and they’re absolutely terrible for the environment and destroying green space (additionally to them being very bad for bees and further sealing the floor which is awful when any flood happens). Luckily people shouldn’t be able to do absolutely everything they want if it hurts everyone so much.
How do you feel about HOAs?
I’m not living in the US. As far as I know, it’s something very ridiculous that every house needs to look absolutely the same (I feel the freedom). And no, what I wrote isn’t “the same”, mandating how every garden needs to look exactly the same is something entirely different to fighting against very specific “garden” styles that combat the environment and are bad for the infrastructure (see floods). I’m fine with people having their garden however they want and doing stuff, but it needs to be in certain boundaries, e.g. that you aren’t allowed to seal all ground which is terrible for bees, the environment in its wholeness and dangerous during floods.
If there are some rare edge cases where many things depend on it and there are very good reasons to set a certain boundary but otherwise leave the freedom to do the own garden and house how they want, that’s something different to just mandating that there is no possibility to choose anything about it’s looks and destroy all creativity and uniqueness.
Got it. HOAs get bad press for requiring every house to look the same, but the basic function they serve also includes preventing stuff like the above. How far they go depends on the HOA, but one that just prevents egregious stuff like the above isn’t fundamentally different from one that requires near uniformity.
I just ask because lots of people hate HOAs, but this is one big reason they exist.
they exist to preserve property values
Just steal the image and put the source in the body text. That way you’re not redirecting everyone to reddit. Sort of defeats the purpose of the protests.
Looks like it ruined the whole area by the looks of it.
Never understood homes that pave/block out all the greenery; makes the home depressing af all for saving some 30min of upkeep per week.
A lot of it is people misunderstanding the logic of “maintaining a lawn is horrible for the environment”. They think that, because they won’t be wasting thousands of gallons of water a month on their lawn that they should pave over it.
Which is a nice intent but mostly shows a misunderstanding of how grass/lawns (should) work. in moist climates you generally don’t actually need to water anything. You might have more weeds or some patchy grass, but natural rain will keep everything alive. And in more arid climates: you just don’t get Kentucky Bluegrass and instead get grass/clover/whatever seeds that make sense for your climate. Those generally need a bit of water to get started and then are fine until the end of time. They might not look like Leave it to Beaver’s yard, but you have roots to prevent soil erosion and it still looks pretty nice.
there’s a common misunderstanding in texas, as well, about cedar trees.
a while back, a ranch owner with ALOT of land, who was considered a great steward of trees, was interviewed for an article and stated that new cedars used too much water and that he tears them all out of areas where he wants to maintain a forest of alternate trees (i.e. oak, elm, whatever, idk)
everyone took that to mean tear out all cedar trees whether there was a forest of other trees or not, no matter how much land you have. they completely overlooked the qualifiers to practice this type of land management. (obviously owning cows are a different story, but almost none of these people own cows)
a ridiculous amount of land in Central Texas (esp the hill country) now is barren save the 1 or 2 odd scraggly oak trees here and there. anytime someone buys land (even a couple of acres) the first thing they do is clear cut the damn place, causing unnecessary erosion, bringing in uneeded heat, and in general, killing the ecosystems that made that area special in the first place.
It looks ssooo and now!! I really want to know why.
The only thing that makes sense in my mind is, maybe the owner’s permanently on wheels and needs a flat, hard surface for their mobility device?
There house, who gives a fuck what theu do with it, remove all the grass, or let it grow to fuck. Dont be a nosy cunt.
